A grim future of perilous, all-pervasive climate breakdown

I have read some scary books about climate change. “Falter”, for example, or “The end of Western Civilisation, a view from the future”.

Hothouse earth

“Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide” is now on that list. We are on course for close to a 14 per cent rise by this date that will almost certainly see us shatter the 1.5°C guardrail in less than a decade. This means there is now no chance of dodging a grim future of perilous, all-pervasive climate breakdown. There is little doubt that our climate is changing for the worse far quicker than predicted by earlier models. What the author means by hothouse Earth is not an ice-free planet, but a world in which lethal heatwaves and temperatures in excess of 50°. ’Global warming has a cosy feel to it that is far from justified by the reality, while the rapidly increasing incidences of extreme weather show that our once stable climate is not simply changing but well on its way to failing.

Arkwright

When Arkwright opened his mill 250 years ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). This is because Arkwright’s legacy is not only the creation of an economic wonder capable of meeting all our wants and needs but a prodigious exhalation of pollution that has seen an additional…